re: What did y'all think about the moderator?(Posted by Catman88 on 10/11/12 at 11:07 pm to stewie)

Where I think she failed:

The purpose of a debate it is to let two sides give a speech so that their audience can learn something from them and allow them to counterpoint where two disagree.

We were never given the opportunity to learn anything from one person because the other was allowed to be a brat. The moderator is the adult in the room and needs to control the children. What happened in the 1st debate was more to the benefit of the audience to allow them to finish and counterpoint. What happened tonight was just bicker..

re: What did y'all think about the moderator?(Posted by PBnJ on 10/11/12 at 11:08 pm to stewie)

People gave her shite for talking too much, but people gave Lehrer shite for not doing enough. Maybe next time we'll get a happy medium? (Wishful thinking I know)

I will commend her for the most part of keeping a watchful eye on time and dispersing it about as evenly as she could. I liked that she pushed both of them for specifics on the issues.

I would have like to have seen more control over Bidens outbursts during Ryan's allotted time to speak, but I think Joe would have only been silenced by a taser tonight

I would like to see a debate format where a candidate loses 20 seconds of talking time each time they interrupt an opponent. I had trouble really following Ryans flow because he couldn't string more than 2 sentences together without Biden making a comment.

re: What did y'all think about the moderator?(Posted by JohnnyKilroy on 10/11/12 at 11:19 pm to Catman88)

Overall I thought she was okay.

Lehrer let them speak, but neither Romney, nor Obama, consistently talked over or interrupted the other. Lehrer didn't really NEED to step in and call for one of the debaters to let their opponent speak.

The ONE thing I really really didn't like about her moderating: She pressed Ryan no less than 3 times for 'specifics' on their debt/deficit plan. Pressed him fairly hard on it.

She then turned to Biden and asked: "Other than taxing the rich, what is the administration's plan for the debt/deficit.

re: What did y'all think about the moderator?(Posted by TROLA on 10/11/12 at 11:24 pm to stewie)

She wasn't bad. Let Biden steamroll more than she should've. Thought she relied to much on her background with all the foreign policy questions, especially jumping them around. Would've preferred one pointed question on the region and more domestic discussion. The last two questions were weak. Abortion, if it must be discussed should be buried in the middle.

quote:You're kidding me right? She did nothing to stop Biden from interrupting and constantly stopped Ryan before he could finish talking.

Ryan butted in a few times as well, so he got his snipes in. I would say that overall the candidates themselves did a good job of keeping the other in check. She did cut Ryan off a few times but he may have been over speaking his turn.